THE RIGHT STUFF:

No Wonder Obama Is Losing Support from the Left (Matthew Rothschild, July 23, 2011, The Progressive)

On health care, he abandoned single payer, and even the public option.

On the banking and housing crisis, he bailed out the banks without extracting any meaningful concessions, such as a moratorium on foreclosures or a 25 percent write-down of the principal on all existing mortgages.

On the stimulus package, he came in well short of what the economy needed, as he was repeatedly warned by Nobel Prize winners in economics Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz and his own Christina Romer, who was chair of his Council of Economic Advisers.

On taxes, he caved on the Bush breaks for millionaires.

On labor, he sat on the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill to make it easier for workers to organize themselves into unions.

On civil liberties, he continued the Bush policies, extending the Patriot Act, not modifying the Military Commissions Act or the NSA spying act, holding suspects indefinitely at Bagram Air Force Base (and actually increasing the numbers held there by a factor of three), siccing the FBI on leftwing solidarity activists, and announcing that he has the right to assassinate anyone--including American citizens--that he deems a threat.

On foreign policy, his rhetoric has been less macho than Bush's but the substance has been the same. His State Department backed the coup makers in Honduras. While he has been critical of Netanyahu in Israel, he hasn't backed that up with any reduction in aid. He was slow to rally to the support of the Arab Spring, and he coddled Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He escalated the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and has pressed for keeping some troops in Iraq. And he launched an illegal air war against Libya.

This week, when he shamefully agreed to raise the retirement age for Social Security and cut benefits for recipients by monkeying with the cost of living (concessions that we were spared only by the obtuseness of the Republican Party), Obama again showed his readiness to give away almost the entire progressive store.

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